I will agree that the game could have stood to be shorter. I personally burned out shortly after realizing that beating the game was nowhere near the same as finishing it
But as far as it\'s place in Supergiant\'s oeuvre... it feels like this is what they were always trying to make? Their early games also pushed testing out everything, intentionally hindering yourself, completing challenges, and so forth. But this stuff makes much more sense in a roguelike than in the easy, short experiences they were making before
I guess there, it felt like a means to an end? It was either a way to get more stuff faster, or to try out the stuff I\'d earned once I was super overpowered, and because Hades\'s roguelike structure prevents the latter (and because once you plateau out advancement becomes so slow and incremental, the former starts feeling like something you\'re doing \'cause you have to rather than because you want to pretty quick), I also find it poorly served by the structure of the thing.
I completely, thoroughly agree with this. There was a moment where I stopped to think \"Do I want to go through the same three levels, killing the same three bosses over and over and over to gather in this grinding, boring chore?\" The answer was no, and this is one of the very few \'rogue-lite\' games I never completed. And even if this was the intent, to test the player in an unsurmountable grind for artistic purposes, just because you intended to make something, doesn\'t make it good. If I crash a car on a wall with the intent of making an art statement about driving, I still crashed a car on a wall and I will walk out with some broken bones.
And after I just watched the ending on youtube I felt livid, \"I nearly went through an insane grinding for THIS?!\"
That makes me feel bad actually. I was invested in the characters in story and their conclusion; finding out it might not be a satisfying one has me a little sad.
speaking as a loser who cant git gud at games, im just really glad that they incentivised dying, or at least made it so that you didnt lose out if you died too much
i think if youre more invested in the gameplay (i certainly was, i LOOOOVED Bastion) the grind isnt as bad; it wasnt for me
hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad
I loved Bastion too; I beat it twice where I haven\'t even beaten any of their other games once. (Well, okay, I guess I\'ve sort of beaten this multiple times, but only for a very generous definition of \"beat.\")
To me, they just don\'t feel or play hardly anything alike, and again, I blame the roguelike stuff. I blame the procedural generation that has seemingly infested every corner of every game nowadays, always making them weaker and worse in my eyes.
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Look, I get why it's endless random grind, but...
This is a comment that turned into a review at some point. If it feels incomplete, or if I ultimately ask it be taken down outright, well, I am recovering from Covid, and maybe this will feel unwise when I'm of sound body and mind in a bit.
Hades was alright the first few times, but I've hit a wall where the absolute best thing I could do for my own progress is repeatedly get killed, and man, I hated that just as much in Darkest Dungeon.
I just wish I didn't need to beat such a hard game so many times, even with Easy mode turned on, to get to the end of stories and characters I'm invested in when so often this randomized roguelike stuff feels like it's a hobble rather than a help.
I've come to accept that I just don't like randomized stuff. That in my mind, putting the dumb machine with no creativity in charge of the part that works best when it's handcrafted with love and care and the humans in charge of the grunt work and boring math homework is a completely bass-ackwards way of doing things and every single game I've ever played that used it was poorer and worse for its inclusion.
It's also got some of that Breath of the Wild stink on it, where I also resent that, since it's easily Supergiant Games's biggest success, it's probably something I'm going to be seeing and getting tons more of all the time, rather than their earlier stuff I prefer.
I like Hades, I guess I should say. The basic gameplay's fun, I guess. The story and aesthetics are on point, which considering the studio's pedigree is pretty obvious, but it's worth noting. And I guess it's not like I've beaten any of their games since Bastion, which I beat twice. I might not be as into the Greek mythology thing as the more imaginative fantasy worlds of previous titles, but hey! I fell in love with the Greek myths as a young Spec once; it's not like I dislike any of them.
But would I like Hades more if it abandoned or heavily deemphasized its randomized elements in favor of something more traditional? Almost certainly.
Lately, it feels like every single run is that moment in Vampire Survivors where the randomizer is constantly trying to shove a steady stream of trash you don't want or need down your throat, and it makes for a weak experience. I absolutely had enough of it a long time ago, and I desperately wish that meant I'd also gotten to a point in the story and the characters I was happy with too, that I didn't need to grind on and on with stuff I've had my fill of putting up with to get a satisfactory conclusion to all of them.